Les Green Archives - Ramblin' with Roger

This picture is 75 years old

March 12, 1950

This picture is 75 years old.

I looked through all of the pictures of my parents, Les and Gertrude (Trudy), on their wedding anniversary, March 12th, that I have posted on this blog. Interestingly, from 2005, when I started the blog, to 2011, the year my mom died, I didn’t post any. Since my dad had died in 2000, I didn’t even think to mention their anniversary.

After she died, though, I felt liberated to write whatever about them. And it also recontextualized how I saw them as a couple. My sisters and I often have ZOOM conversations on Sunday afternoons, which started during COVID, and early on, a lot of conversations were about their dynamics individually and as a couple.

Still, I often used a group photo, as I did here on March 12. It’s probably because I think it’s a hoot; it looks like a bunch of wary relatives.

Changing it up

But to my knowledge, I’ve never used this photo. My sister Marcia, the keeper of the pictures, posted it on Facebook eight years ago, and then sister Leslie reposted it recently. I have no idea who took it. If I were a betting man, it would probably be one of my maternal grandmother Williams’ brothers, Ed or Ernie Yates.

This picture is in the First Ward of Binghamton, NY, near 13 Maple Street, on March 12, 1950. I was always grateful that they decided to get married in a year ending with a zero; it made the math much more straightforward. So I can remember the family drama on March 12, 1995, for instance, a story for another time.

My father looks happy in this photo. But my mother is more contemplative, wondering what she’s gotten herself into, which is a reasonable concern. Or maybe she’s just looking at someone, maybe a younger cousin. I use the terms “mother” and “father” loosely because I wasn’t born until five days shy of three years later.

My parents were married 50 years and two days shy of five months.

Viridescent

You Can’t Do That

The WordDaily for September 12 was viridescent. The accent is on the third syllable. I was unfamiliar with the term, though I knew it likely was green-adjacent.

“‘Viridescent’ is an adjective you’ll likely see only in poetic or literary contexts. It comes directly from the Latin word of the same spelling, meaning ‘becoming green,’ from the Latin word for ‘green,’ ‘viridis.’ As we see from the Latin, ‘viridescent’ isn’t just a shade of green; it’s an adjective that describes something in the process of becoming green. It may be used for shoots of new growth, or shades shifting between hues of yellow or blue to green.”

Some animals turn green as camouflage.

Watching trees becoming green is one of the great joys of living in the Northeastern US in the spring. One April, I traveled to the southeast US; I don’t remember where, when, or why. What I do recall that it was appreciably greener there, which disrupted my expectations. Then back to Albany and the not-quite greenery.

I lean into the the green. On the September 12 Wordle:

Wordle 1,181 3/6

🟨🟩⬜🟩⬜
⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

My second word was GRASS because most grass is green. (The word was actually BRASS, but close enough.)

Musical reference: Mountain Greenery from the Supremes Sing Rodgers and Hart. All of my Supremes albums were stolen from my grandmother’s house in the early 1970s – which made me blue – except that one LP which appeared to have been dropped by the thief.

Dad

Not Being Green, but Becoming Green. It’s an interesting concept. I think of my father, who was born Leslie Walker but legally became Leslie Green only a couple of weeks before his 18th birthday in 1944. However, he’s listed as Green (misspelled Greene) in the 1940 Census.

In doing the genealogy, I’ve concentrated on the Walker (dad’s mom), Yates (mom’s mom), Williams (mom’s dad), and even the recently discovered Cone (dad’s bio dad). But I hadn’t spent much time on the Green line because they weren’t my biological ancestors. At some point, I should remedy that.

Speaking of lineage, when I received over time revised ancestry breakdown, I went from being 23% Irish to being 28% Irish in the past five years. I’m becoming more (wearing of the) green.

So I lean into the color. One of my favorite Beatles songs is You Can’t Do That because it has the bridge:

Everybody’s green‘Cause I’m the one, who won your loveBut if they’d seenYou’re talking that way they’d laugh in my face

BTW, I’m also fond of the Harry Nilsson medley.

Turning green with envy. Jealousy is the green-eyed monster. What an unpleasant transformation, I don’t want to change to THAT kind of green.

Coverville 1505 is the Emerald Anniversary Episode with green in all of the titles, save one.

I’m continuing to figure out the ever-evolving R. Green.

Dad’s cousin Ruth

tracking Walkers

Here’s my dad’s cousin Ruth (R) with two of her children. My sister Leslie and I saw her in October 2022 at the church we all grew up in, Trinity AME Zion in Binghamton, NY. She pointed out a room that used to be a Sunday school classroom where my paternal grandmother Agatha Green used to teach Sunday school to me and a bunch of other kids. It is now a room of noted members of the Trinity family, and she asked us for large photos of our parents for the wall, which we still need to get for her.

The most recent time I saw her was in August 2024, in Horseheads, NY, at the Elmira Jazz Festival. She and her two daughters went to see my niece Leslie’s daughter Rebecca Jade in concert.

She told the story, which I had heard before, about how, after I was born, my father was at her house. He was furiously scribbling on a piece of paper, but she had no idea what the heck he was doing. He was trying to figure out my name, and he wanted to get it to spell out something with my initials and name. Hence, ROG = Roger Owen Green. So she witnessed my naming.

Walker clan

In July 2024, sister Leslie was in Binghamton for her high school reunion. She went to see Cousin Ruth. Ruth gave her a whole bunch of information about the genealogy of the Walker clan. Ruth’s father was Earl; Earl was my paternal grandmother’s brother, so Ruth was my father’s first cousin. She was over a dozen years younger than him, so she didn’t know all the early stories about my father, but she knew him like a big brother.

She has kept track of the Walker genealogy, knowing all of Earl and Agatha’s siblings’ birth/death dates and those of some of their descendants. This will be very useful once I get a chance to work on it. She is my oldest living relative, so I’ve known her even longer than I’ve known Leslie.

I want to thank Ruth for the opportunity to delve into my father’s history. Had he been alive, my father would have been 98 tomorrow. He died in 2000, yet he remains a mystery in various strange and subtle ways.

My dad is still in my head

Hamlet, but I’m less than 1% Danish

Obviously, my dad is still in my head.

In April, when I was at my Dad’s group at church, the pastor was reading a piece on joy by Fred Buechner. We talked about the concept. Then, I mentioned that my go-to emotional state was melancholy.

I related this story, which I wrote about back in 2010. But I left details out, which I will add in italics.

We had a piano which my father painted, lilac, I think. “When I was four or five years old, Leslie marked up the piano with some crayons. In retrospect, it seemed like a reasonable thing; he colored the piano so she could too. My father went to Leslie and asked her who had marked the piano, and she said that Roger had done it.

“So my father got the strap that hung in the kitchen – this brown leather thing about a foot long that barbers used to sharpen their razors – and started wailing on me. One of the things he was looking for from me was an apology, yet even in the midst of my pain, I was unable to do so. ‘I didn’t do it, I didn’t do it!’ I sobbed.

“Eventually, and these are pretty much in the words of my father, recounting the incident years later, he figured that I was either really stupid or I was actually innocent. Finally, he requestioned Leslie, who finally confessed, and he started wailing on her.”

I’ve told this story a few times, but usually one-on-one, to my wife or a close friend. But this time, I added, “But he didn’t f**in’ BELIEVE me!”

Huh

Hmm. That was interesting. And surprising. Me cursing, even in our closed group, is not in my nature. So the telling of this thing that happened in 1958 somehow still has a visceral reaction in me. Among other things, it informs the pain when I feel when I’m not heard, or when people make assumptions about me that are untrue. It can tick me off but later, the melancholy takes hold.

The next morning, one of my online buddies wrote to say he was having prostate surgery; it was benign. My father died of prostate cancer. It was an interesting coincidence.

And the stories on CBS Sunday Morning that day – this is why Allah invented the DVR – about “The Covenant of Water” author Abraham Verghese, who was inspired by his mother and grandmothers; and Photographer James Balog on documenting climate change: “Adventure with a purpose” somehow leaned into the melancholy.

My relationship with my father was complicated. I’m sure my sisters would say that about their respective dealings with him, too. It’s been 24 years to the day since he died. I had the ridiculous thought that everyone should die in years ending in zero because it makes the math easier.

Talk about my generations

Samuel Walker

Talk about my generations. This is a photo of Samuel Walker and his grandson, Leslie H. Green. The baby Samuel is holding is Les’ first-born, who is me. Everyone in the family called Samuel Father, including me.

Samuel was born in Virginia in 1873. I am not certain who his parents were. A hint from someone else’s tree on Ancestry suggests that his father was Robert A. Walker, born 28 April 1817 in Brookneal, Campbell County, VA, and died in 1889 in Pittsylvania County, VA. Or maybe he was the son of Richard Walker of Virginia.

Likewise, another hint suggests his mother may have been Julia Cousins, a black woman born c. 1835. She had seven children aged 25 to six, all but Sam with the surname Cousins. This likewise requires more investigation. There was also a Julia Walker associated with Sam Walker.

What is clear is that Samuel married Mary Eugenia Patterson in Pennsylvania in 1899. The couple lived with one of her sisters in 1900.

Samuel and Mary Eugenia had at least nine children. Loren, b. 1906, and Mildred, b. 1919, died in infancy.

The family moved to Binghamton by 1920. The 1930 Census listed Samuel, a janitor; Mary Eugenia; Agatha H., my grandmother, b. 1902; S. Earl (1904-1961), Stanley E, b. 1910; Vera, b. 1912; Melissa C (1914–1955); Jessie Garnett, b. 1916; Morris S, b. 1918. And Wesley (b. 1926).

Mary Eugenia died in 1944, so I don’t recall her.

Agatha’s siblings

I remember all of Grandma Green’s siblings who reached adulthood except Melissa. All of them in their 40s and 50s were terrified of this little old man in his 80s. But Wesley, who was really Leslie – the Census taker must have gotten it wrong – was actually Samuel and Mary Eugenia’s grandson, fathered by Raymond Cone. Maybe there was a bit of prevarication there. Les was NOT afraid of his grandfather, at least when I saw them together.

While McKinley Green married Agatha in 1931, they were apart as much as they were together before my father’s 18th birthday in 1944, even though Mac adopted my dad and officially took his last name before then.

So, Samuel/Father was very much a father to my dad, probably more of a benevolent one than he was to his own children. Samuel Walker died in June 1963, less than a year before my grandma Green passed away.